When we think of the world's first person to go into space, we all think of his name: Yuri Alexievich Gagarin, but when it comes to the first creature of The Earth to enter the sky, we can't think of its name, in fact, the first animal to enter space is the stray dog Lycra.
In the 1950s, the United States and the former Soviet Union began to compete in the field of space, and both wanted to lead each other, so they secretly launched a variety of competitions. First of all, the former Soviet Union launched the first human satellite Sputnik 1 into space, and after the successful launch of the artificial satellite, Khrushchev, who was the supreme leader of the former Soviet Union at the time, issued instructions: Please launch something new in space for the anniversary of our October Revolution. And this new thing is to send life into space.
But the idea was proposed less than a month before the rocket was launched, and despite the efforts of the engineers, the return capsule was still too late to design, that is, the transport of the life form into space was doomed from the beginning to be sacrificed in space.
Unfortunately, Lycra, the stray dog, is the chosen dog. Laika is a stray dog on the streets of Moscow, only about 3 years old, and is a female dog. It had been wandering the streets for a long time before it was adopted.
The reason why Laika was chosen for space missions is because dogs have accompanied humans for thousands of years, they have been completely domesticated by humans, and they can understand instructions with a little training. Secondly, because stray dogs are more adaptable to the environment, their physical resistance is better than that of pet dogs.
More importantly, due to the limited space of the designed space capsule for space missions, only stray dogs weighing less than 10 kilograms can be selected, and Laika just fits in. In addition, Laika is also a female dog, the female dog will not lift her legs to pee, can easily design spacesuits for her. Laika is about 3 years old, physically and energetically able to undergo training from the devils of the space base.
In fact, the space base did not only choose Lycra a stray dog, but 9, and then let them undergo more than 20 days of space devil training together. In training, their training intensity is very high, because space does not tolerate them because they are a dog, and only by making more efforts during training can they overcome the difficulties encountered in the space process.
Laika excelled in these trainings, surprisingly quiet and cooperative, and responded easily to human commands, so it stood out among 9 dogs and became the target dog, while the stray dog Albina and the stray dog Mushka were substitutes for Laika.
In this way, on the day of the launch of the spacecraft, Laika set off into space on the satellite "Sputnik 2", and at this moment, the hope of human beings to get out of the earth fell on a stray dog Laika.
Although people knew that Laika had no return before it set off, we still hoped that it would not suffer when death came.
According to the authorities, Laika completed a week-long flight mission after landing in space, then died in a deep sleep after eating a highly toxic dinner. If Laika really died like this, it would be a blessing in disguise.
However, the truth is very cruel, and the official statement glorifies Laika's death, and the real Laika suffered greatly before she died.
Before Laika entered the ship, scientists installed a number of sensors on Laika's body and under his skin to detect his heartbeat and breathing, and this data will be automatically transmitted back to the ground console so that scientists can know its condition at any time.
According to the data, after Laika just entered space, due to design errors, the temperature in the cabin continued to rise, and finally the temperature in the cabin reached 40 degrees Celsius, and Laika endured high temperature and high pressure, slowly died in 5-7 hours, and suffered great pain in the process of dying.
After Laika's death, the remains remained on sputnik 2, which disintegrated after 162 days in orbit, eventually falling into earth's atmosphere and burning up in the earth's atmosphere, as did Laika's remains.
Later, after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, Laika's true experience was revealed, and many people around the world thanked Laika for the sacrifice he made for mankind, built a monument for it, issued stamps, and sang songs for it, but Laika never came back.
From ancient times to the present, human beings have always had a space dream, and in the process of realizing the space dream, it is inevitable that there will be sacrifices, but Laika's sacrifice makes people feel extremely sorry, because it should not have died. If the former Soviet Union had not been motivated by the need to compete with the United States, but had explored outer space step by step like our country, laika would not have had to be pushed into the spacecraft in a hurry, and it might not have been sacrificed.